Quite the diplomat, Khrushchev. I wonder how many Russians know of the UN shoe speech of 1960.
Posted on 02/28/2006 9:52:36 AM PST by x5452
The day Khrushchev buried Stalin
By Nina L. Khrushcheva who teaches international affairs at New School University in New York: Los Angeles Times Published February 28, 2006
When Nikita Khrushchev died in 1971, I was still a young girl, but I remember him well. We used to visit him on the weekends on his farm at Petrovo Dalnee, about 30 miles outside of Moscow. I'd work with him among the tomatoes or at his beehives. Although to me he was just my kindly old great-grandfather, my family assured me then and later that he was a great man, a world leader, a liberator--someone I should be proud of.
But at the privileged school for the children of the party elite that I attended on Kutuzovsky Prospect, I never heard his name. As far as my teachers were concerned, there was no such man. He didn't exist. Anything that had happened in government between 1953 and 1964, when my great-grandfather led the country, was described as having been done merely by the "Communist Party of the Soviet Union." The name Khrushchev was entirely deleted from the history books.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
Russia is a country with no tradition of liberty whatsoever. I wonder what it will take for them to embrace it.
wistifully going back to the days they ALMOST helped destroy America...sniff, sniff
They did endorse Bush...
Why wonder, tickets are cheap, and liberty abounds there.
There is a great section in Solzhenitsyn's CANCER WARD where the one communist party enthusiast in the ward is anticipating the newspaper edition on the second anniversary of Stalin's death. He wonders if the entire front page will be trimmed in black. When the paper arrives he is shocked to see no mention of the anniversary except for a back-page reprint of an essay by Stalin entitled "Problems in Construction" (using the Marxist meaning for construction or the construction of a perfect socialist society).
It was a dramatic moment in history when Stalin's cadaver was removed from its place beside Lenin, laid in a red-lined coffin, and buried out back at the Kremlin wall.
Another great moment came when the honor guard was removed from Lenin's tomb and moved around the corner to the tomb of the unknown soldier. Now Lenin has just regular guards without the ceremonial changing. The changing ceremony at the tomb of the unknown (a soldier who died fighting the Germans less than thirty miles from Moscow) is very impressive.
And it'll be a more dramatic moment when they finally move Stalin and Lenin far from the Kremlin wall. :)
Excellent observation. :^/
Quite the diplomat, Khrushchev. I wonder how many Russians know of the UN shoe speech of 1960.
"And they were singin', 'Bye, bye, old Siberian pie, drove my troika to the Volga, but the vodka's run dry...'"
Ben Franklin's comment applies to all countries, not just the United States:
"A republic, if you can keep it."
It depends on whether they want it bad enough.
They did manage to endorse Bush for the election though, so they aren't totally lost perhaps...
I wonder if she is aware the Nikita says that he personally SHOT his political rival in the head to assure his assent to power....what a kindly old grand-dad indeed.
I assume you're referring to Beria? Not like that guy was a saint, either...
May have been Beria...my point is that Nikita was a cold blooded killer who laughed and joked about shooting someone in the head to assure his power....Nina writes as if he was a kindly old puff ball who deserves to be considered a great of history.
Unfortunately, Eric Zorn, one of the big libs on the staff, once wrote an article that said, yeah well, the Editorial Board has to do that for tradition's sake, but we libs are in control of the paper in reality.
If you're talking about Beria then that monster and rapist deserved it. Good on Nikita.
Well, he *was* the woman's great-grandfather. I'm sure that makes it difficult for her to see him for what he really was.
I do find it curious that in her mind, the fall of the Soviet Union doesn't qualify as one of the most significant moments in Russia's history, but the Bolshevik Revolution does... sounds like she has some nostalgia for the USSR.
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